COMPANY

Kristian Electric

INDUSTRY

Welding & Material Handling

RELEVANT FEATURES

Exchange

It Just Works

Don't settle for less when it comes to risk

“In all IT based solutions you get what you pay for. Sometimes you get less then what you pay for which is unfortunate but happens. Small based, start-up IT firms without experience I find are very scary for the current market of IT solution providers. Most people grow up on computers now a days and for the most part are very comfortable working a computer. But when it comes to the security, and integrity of your data I find that it gets forgotten about and therefore a lack of value invested into it. Sometimes you can save a few dollars but in the end is it really worth it? I find that spending more doesn’t always mean lining pockets, as companies with longevity understand that those dollars must be reinvested to grow. The smaller companies that lower their pricing just to win over business usually don’t have anything left at the end of the day, falling to the wayside.

I personally have never been a fan of cloud base systems. I am old school and like to have my data on my site so I know its backed up and secure behind my firewalls. I still am that way when it comes to a lot of my data but with email I am more relaxed as it’s just a pass through. Yes the mail ost/pst files are kept in the cloud but they are not like doc files. Devices can attach to the cloud based file so it makes everything very simple to replicate throughout multiple devices. Computers, phones, laptops and tablets are the way most businesses are running and having contacts all over the place make it frustrating to stay up to date. With your email, contacts and calendar events all streamlined across all devices it allows me to keep up to date. The main reason we moved away from housing our own exchange server was the SPAM that is constantly coming into the building. With NIRIX hosting our email, the SPAM stays at NIRIX and my bandwidth is only being used by the good emails. This allows us to not have to pay into 3rd party SPAM filtering, whitelist, blacklists, etc so the costs seam to work themselves out. I don’t have to have exchange on my PC anymore (nice cost savings there since server 2012 release), I don’t have the bandwidth bottle neck from SPAM, or the cost of the 3rd party applications to filter it out, plus the man power to administer it all.

I have found lots of advantages to cloud based email over the years, to be honest I can’t name them all. The security of being able to cut off a device’s connection works really well. Bring your own device to work benefits as well, as when I remove their email, their contacts and their calendar events I am not worried as much about the data that is left on their phone. Most communication is done with email and contacts so having those at my disposal to be removed from someone’s device allows the peace of mind that they can’t take my clients and run. Now more security policies need to be put into place then just the reliability of removing the connection but it’s a nice feature. The other big benefit, and last I will mention, is the management dashboard that NIRIX has in place. I can connect to my email services from anywhere in the world. Yes I have setup, provisioned and got email services working from Mexico… So having the flexibility without the security (tying back into the MS exchange) from anywhere I have my laptop is a very helpful feature as the biggest requests always come when you are away from the office (Murphy’s law).

When it comes to the migration from our MS exchange to NIRIX it was painless. I worked alongside Stan and I had all branches up and running within a few hours. Installing the office suite software (if not done already) takes the longest but can be done before the changeover. The rest is just creating a new profile, and pointing it to the NIRIX server. You must have control of your SRV record (some domain based companies don’t give you access to it) so it can point to NIRIX as well, as soon as those minor changes are made everything just works. Bring a backup of your current mailbox profile to your new NIRIX profile and all the emails will be on all your devices you link. Simple steps, very limited downtime.

As for the performance and reliability of NIRIX's oneExchange, I can’t remember having any downtime, if I ever have. It just works. ”

– JERRY THOMPSON, KRISTIAN ELECTRIC